Artwork Description:
Ha Chong-Hyun is a pioneering member of the Korean Dansaekhwa, or “Monochrome painting,” movement, dedicating his career to engage with discourses around institutional critique and advocating for the Korean avant-garde. In his hallmark Conjunction series, Ha Chong-Hyun pushes thick paint through the backs of loosely woven hemp canvases, creating a textured surface that is entirely unique to his practice. The term “conjunction” signifies the unmediated meeting of the artist’s two most important elements–his method and his materials–and has been a decades-long project. Ha first began making his Conjunction series in the 1970s in post-war Korea, where his use of hemp, a robust material commonly used for transporting goods during the war and subsequent reconstruction, distinguished his work from the traditional Western canvas.

Conjunction 85-31 features white paint, which has been manipulated in an expressive manner, using broader, bolder strokes. This technique results in a thick, impasto surface that is relief-like in how it expands from the canvas. The impressions left by the artist's touch evoke a sense of movement and gesture within the space, capturing the physicality of the creative process, as noted by critic Nakahara Yusuke, who described these marks as “fingerlike.” The use of white paint echoes the aesthetic of Ha's earlier Conjunction works from the 1970s, though this more recent piece demonstrates a continued evolution in his exploration of materiality and texture.